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Friday, January 08, 2016

Green Dot to roll out across the Air Force

1/8/2016 - WASHINGTON (AFNS) -- Airmen
will take the first step of a five-year strategy to decrease
interpersonal violence across the service in January when 1,500 Airman
implementers attend one of 22 Green Dot prep sessions worldwide.

The Air Force contracted the non-profit Green Dot organization to
provide these violence prevention tools to the total Air Force over the
next three years.

"As a service, our number one priority has and will continue to be
response. However, in order to stop violence before it occurs we must
dedicate time to prevention," said Chief Master Sgt. Melanie Noel, the
Air Force Sexual Assault Prevention and Response senior enlisted
advisor. "Helping our Airmen understand what they can do to prevent
violence and how they can do it is the first step."

Green Dot prepares organizations to implement a strategy of violence
prevention that reduces power-based interpersonal violence, which
includes not only sexual violence, but also domestic violence, dating
violence, stalking, child abuse, elder abuse, and bullying.

"Green Dot is the Air Force's first step in arming Airmen for violence
prevention using an evidence based public health model," said Dr. Andra
Tharp, the Air Force's highly qualified prevention expert. "Although
that sounds complicated, really what it means is that we know Airmen are
a vital part of the solution and we will use methods like this that
have been subjected to rigorous scientific testing and were proven to be
effective in reducing violence."

Reflective of Green Dot's wider scope, command-designated Airmen at each
installation will conduct 50-minute long sessions across the Air Force.
Installation leadership will also have oversight of Green Dot through
the Community Action Information Board and Integrated Delivery System,
and track completion through the Advanced Distributed Learning System.

"It's on all of us to take responsibility to prevent interpersonal
violence in our Air Force," said Air Force CAIB chair, Brig. Gen. Lenny
Richoux. "There are more good Airmen out there who want to take care of
their wingman than there are predators seeking to inflict acts of
violence inside our family, and I have confidence our Airmen won't let
me or each other stand-alone against this criminal behavior."

The 1,500 Airman implementers will complete training by March 2016. They
will return to their units to train peer leader Airmen at each base
followed by training for all Airmen.

"Taking care of one another requires an integrated approach using the
expertise of the medical community, sexual assault prevention and the
Profession of Arms Center of Excellence," Richoux said. "Old-school
analog leadership from commanders and supervisors and between Airmen is
the key to our success."